- The National Park Service website has removed all mentions of “transgender” from the Stonewall Inn page, sparking outrage.
The Stonewall Inn is the site of the 1969 Stonewall Uprising, which is considered the starting point of the gay rights movement in America. Participants in the uprising included transgender activists like Marsha P. Johnson (who later founded STAR to help homeless transgender youth) and Sylvia Rivera.
It holds an important place in the history of LGBTQ+ people in the USA. In 2016, the Stonewall Inn was designated a national monument by then-president Barack Obama; at the time, it was the first national monument celebrating the LGBTQ+ community.
On Thursday last week, people discovered that the webpage of the Stonewall Inn on the National Park Service (NPS) had removed all mentions of the word “transgender”. Instead of “LGBTQ+”, the page used “LGB” or “LGBQ” (despite the latter, the word “queer” was also removed). The updated description now read: “Before the 1960s, almost everything about living openly as a lesbian, gay, bisexual (LGB) person was illegal, but the events at the Stonewall Inn sparked fresh momentum for the LGB civil rights movement!” The NPS is a government body overseeing all federal public grounds in the country.
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As the news of the revision spread, activists arrived at the Stonewall Inn to protest against the decision. The outrage was also widespread online, with scholars and activists decrying the decision. The move, however, is in line with the broader agenda of the Trump government to limit gender identity rights in the country. Previously, the government had barred transgender women from competing in women’s sports, barred all mention of the word “transgender” in schools, and put a hold on gender-affirming medical care for transgender soldiers in the army.
